We have an old ceramic pot that my mother used to use. It is taller than it is wide, and the green glaze ends at the base. Leaving a small chalky underside where the name of the maker is stamped, and where you can appreciate it for the underlying raw material.
On the inside, it was perhaps once white. Now it is yellowed, but more notably it has that lattice of grey lines somewhat reminiscent of tiles on an old Roman bath. The crack that runs through it is obvious on the raw base, and when I take the pot down from the cupboard I find my fingers drifting to locate the line of the crack, while normal kitchen banter and dialogue entertains my eyes. It is a small pot, so I have used it to make a hot curry for myself in the oven. A curry too hot for my wife to eat, and too small to try make in a bigger casserole dish.
I am afraid that someone might drop the pot , and it will be gone forever. Gone with the mental image of my mother using the pot in the kitchen on the farm. And so the use of the thing takes the form of a small indulgence. A small act of sentimental selfishness.
It is not lost on me that these little indulgences are doomed to end. My mother’s own death is near. My memories of her in good health are as faded and aged as the patina of the pot. Those memories will end with me too.
But I use the pot, just as I use my grandfather’s old fly reels. I saw one of these advertised by a vintage tackle dealer the other day, and I showed my wife the match of what he was selling, to the one in my fishing bag. The one I used last week.
Elsewhere in the house there are relics, not in use. They too were vessels of nostalgia, but they are poorer for their hanging on a wall. I too, am poorer for their designation as artefacts. If the pot stayed in a glass case I wouldn’t get to run my finger around the rim and lick the last of the curry gravy before replacing the lid with that characteristic auditory trigger which the chalky ceramic emits. Has always emitted. The reel on a shelf with the family silver would not be turned over in my hand in the bright autumn sunshine of the Lotheni valley, with the peaks of the Drakensberg smiling down on it.
The smashing of the pot will bring pain, and in my mind’s eye I can contemplate that day. Just as we can anticipate our own mortality, our living cuts a sharp consciousness because of that realisation. The reel is treasured each time it’s click and pawl rings out in the heady humid gloom at the end of an evening rise. It’s loss; its damage; its theft; and its feel in my hand today sews a thread between inevitable loss, and moments of significance. A thread between today’s reverent enjoyment of the thing, and an indeterminable but inevitable day in the future when a sense of loss will wash over me. But I must use it still, because wall curry is not a thing. And because I am more inclined to look down at the reel in my hand in the mountains, than to look up at the one on a high shelf.
My acknowledgement of the weight of the iconography pulls me to preserve the pot. To stow the reel safely. To reduce its significance through disuse. My affection for the utility of these things pushes me to risk them in a hot oven where the crack will surely burst through, to take it to the mountain stream where I will slip and fall and bash the rim on a rock.
Fear and pleasure. Risk and loss. Life and death.
11 Responses
So, so true. We can all learn a lesson from your wonderful story! Beautifully written by a gifted writer!
Thank you Andrew.
Thanks Rob
Magnificently written, all true.
Thank you Stephen.
I have my dad’s nightcap glass next to my bed . It’s nothing special to most, just an old black translucent object that holds liquids , but to me it is an object of countless memories.
I drink from it everyday to swallow my meds & think how fortunate I am to have out lived him in age be some 13 years.
In a year from now nightcap glass will be 61 years old, & will have equaled the time the time dad had on this earth.
Hi Tony! Thanks for sharing your talisman …(can we call it that if its a useful object, and not just a token? I don’t know). All the very best.
My sentiments exactly as Robin’s, Andrew. We have a very large, old ceramic pot – creamy yellow in colour, with black edging – that my Mother used to boil mussels and crayfish in that my brother and I caught when we were young and able. How clearly I remember that sweet, salty sea smell when the pot boiled over when it was full of mussels or crayfish! It now sits on the kitchen shelf, unused – it is far too big for a curry – unless you were catering for 20+ people – but I like looking at it and remembering. Sometimes it is brought down for the 30 mussels an individual is legally allowed to harvest, but it is not quite the same as when it was bubbling over with 10 or 12 crayfish, or 100 mussels!
Richard. I think the solution to the problem is to cater for 20+ people. To replace the age of plenitude in nature, with a spirit of plenty among friends. I’ll bring the cardamom, ginger and lime! 🙂
Excellent idea!! Will have to do so!
Beautifully written
I have a mug for my late son,religiously used on fishing outings ,always a special memory along a narrow stream .
Steve, That will be such a special mug. I hear you. I have no doubt it “fishes well”.